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Post by Mabel on May 22, 2016 3:11:48 GMT
I know I've been going on about this issue lately, but I'm now a little heart broken, not just for financial reasons (going to have to resort to the horrors of the other STR platforms now) but also because I have been honestly touched by the experiences I've had hosting here over the past 4 years. The remaining guests I have, which were booked before the roll out of the of the new matching software, have been a bittersweet reminder of how special it has been to provide new and interesting culinary experiences to those from far away cultures - memories they will take back with them for life. I would have preferred to continue this experience for another year at least. I've done due diligence with customer service on the problem (who are all very empathetic of course, but who agree that there are no real persons that can override the decisions implemented in the name of the company's global growth, in regards to the new software tools that leave such collateral damage to hosts such as this. Long time hosts in exemplary standing who are shut down by the new features such as "neighborhood preferences". All inquiries for us have come to a dead stop since the roll out. But anyway... 4 years was a good run, and "Super Host" status is not making any difference (not that i ever wanted it but have it anyway). I have been reading previous posts on GHF about other platform options but there is not a lot of input there regarding hosts' experiences with them and which ones are less problematic than others. I have in the past used the horrific Flip Key, and the more horrific Booking.com. So i am thinking i will give "Home Away" a try. But I won't make any changes for a month or so, just to focus on my other income streams and also to see if anything changes with Airbnb's software choices. I will be curious to see if in the long run if Airbnb experiences any drop in revenue from the new matching software which eliminates reservations for many hosts in big cities who are not centrally located. I remember seeing and laughing at a comment i read somewhere from here, that included the phrase "Hire some grown ups!". Oy - Millennials.
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Post by CC on May 22, 2016 4:00:26 GMT
I agree that Flipkey is absolutely worthless.
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Post by Mabel on May 22, 2016 11:40:04 GMT
I definitely intend to keep my listing active throughout whatever dormant period is occurring and yes I highly suspect that there is something else going on other than just the new matching roll out, perhaps many variables all at the same time. That's why I'll wait it out while trying other things. I've also seen the algorithm change and shift over the years resulting in highs and lows, but this was a dead stop and has remained unchanged, so it seems quite different. Thanks for your input Andrew. I'll post updates periodically.
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Post by High Priestess on May 22, 2016 15:50:24 GMT
Grace--- so sorry to hear that your business has been so severely effected. I concur with Andrew that it's likely there are other factors involved people in my area for instance began complaining of a slowdown in inquiries many months ago --- and in London people were talking about this problem over a year ago .
Have you checked to see where your listing shows up in search results ? Eg what page? (And have others check for you).,
I have found that it has been quite beneficial in terms of improving search results if I update my listing every single day . This means going to the listing and changing something in the description or House rules etc. on a daily basis . Used to be that visiting the calendar was all you needed to do to update the listing but that is no longer sufficient now you actually need to make a change in the listing . However the change can be as little as changing one word in the description .
I was having a very slow period In February and March but once I started updating my listing daily , in mid April I started to have more inquiries .
Also In order to see if this is a problem just for you or others in your city it can help to look at other hosts calendars in your area and see how busy they are or how not busy they are by comparison to you .
Finally there are people who are available for consultation on managing your Airbnb business there are some shown on this forum if you go below and look under classified ads and webinars you'll see some people and places you can go to for consultation .
I hope this helps and keep us posted how things are going!
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Post by helgaparis on May 22, 2016 19:15:44 GMT
Grace, you can try one more thing, on top of the other useful advice:
Look your listing up daily on several different browsers, best logging in on different nets (a mobile computer, that you don't use for hosting in a Starbucks) or the browsers set on private mode. Search as a guest, with or without filters, if necessary zoom down to street level to get your listing in the list of search results. Open it and look on all the pictures like an interested guest.
If you have family or friends with airbnb accounts, someone can send you a request, that you preapprouve. short term, so you get rid of it in the list quickly.
The click-through rate, from the result list to the listing gets points and the acceptance too, as does speed.
Even if they added a few criteria to the search for a better "matching", I don't think that they eliminated all the old criteria, so the old tricks should still help.
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Post by Mabel on May 23, 2016 18:20:24 GMT
Thank you Helga and Deborah! Some of the things that I've been doing on a daily basis for at least a year now have included updating my calendar, sometimes even twice a day (price changing, and allowing the suggested pricing), allowing Instant Book, responding almost immediately to each inquiry, pre-approving almost all inquiries even if i remove the pre-approval shortly afterward, making some little change in my description, and checking my "stats". Things I do on occasion are update my photos and profile, and check other hosts listings/calendars in my area. Other hosts are showing fuller calendars or at least some unavailability, which of course you never know if they self-blocked for personal reasons or are booked with reservations. What I've been doing daily over the past few months is using the incognito browser on desktop, laptop and smartphone to check my own listing's search rankings and click through all the info on it.
It even occurred to me that perhaps the algorithm didn't like my constant accessing and tweaking because of all the auto notifications it has to send in email saying my account was updated (which they have stopped) and therefore could have had something to do with it. I've also recently submitted a request to customer service on the Airbnb site (instead of calling via phone all the time) which is now responded to by a "peer" host rather than an employee, however she seemed knowledgable forthcoming with more tips - one of which was to list a weekly discount so that I show up in "long term stays". It can be set to as little as 1% which is what I have done to see if that makes a difference. I only accept stays for up to twelve days, and I don't know if the algorithm prefers longer stay options.
I also had experienced a big increase in reservations over the winter months, which is unusual for me, for reasons other than tourism, and I wonder if the algorithm determined that I had had my share for now and to give it a break in order to evenly spread the exposure around between all other listings in my city. I also recently turned on "smart pricing" to see if the algorithm likes that idea as well. I am also trying the use of the new "auto response" tool they put in the inbox as an alternative to my instructions to read the listing before contacting me. The peer-host suggested this for a higher click through rate. One of the things I have learned is that the number of eyeballs on your listing increases your ranking, whether or not they submit an inquiry. The peer-host told me this and Helga thank you for your tip about that too! I didn't know this and had everything set up to not receive worthless inquiries. So now with that auto-response tool I have changed things to allow as many worthless inquiries as they want, in order to get more views. My listing appears to be in an okay rank position right now and last night I got my first inquiry in weeks, even though it was from someone who had read none of the information, thought it was in the opposite part of town than it is and had a last minute emergency needing a very early bag drop-off. No reservation, but still an inquiry!
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Post by High Priestess on May 24, 2016 0:22:51 GMT
Grace, good for you, you are doing quite a lot to try to keep your business going. THat's great. One other thing I will suggest ( I will only mention this on this forum, as an extra tip for those who come here) to put "eyes on your listing", is to direct people to it via Craigslist or perhaps other websites as well. Craigslist has stopped allowing those who advertise on its site to include any links to Airbnb listings, so the only way you can get people from Craigslist (or other sites) to see your Airbnb listing, is to either send the link to all those who respond to your Craiglist ad, or create your own website for your rentals, the link to which you can then put in the Craigslist ad. If you create your own website, you can put a link to your Airbnb listing there.
If you set up your own website, this means that Craiglist viewers are three clicks away from your Airbnb listing -- they first (1)click on your Craigslist ad, then in that ad, they(2) click on your link to your personal website, and then (3) once in your website they click on your link to your Airbnb listing.
If your goal is to get eyeballs on your listing, I suggest writing your Craigslist ad so that it does not filter out as many potential guests as you would eventually want to filter out in your final screening process. (IT's hard to do that in a short ad anyway....). If you just convey the basics in the ad (but have something appealing, to draw in interest -- photo or catchy title), then you can have people read the details in your Airbnb listing.
Depending upon the property rental market in your area, one could potentially get a LARGE number of "eyeballs" on your listing in this way. For instance, take a look at this graph that shows the statistics for my website for the last 90 days:
For most of April I was regularly getting over 100 page views per day, and for a week I had over 200 views per day. (I haven't had my Craigslist ad up for most of May - have been too busy...) Not all those people were going to go the one step further and look at my Airbnb listing, but even if only 10% of them did, that still helps.
I think as Airbnb signs up more and more hosts, hosts who really want/need the business, are going to have to figure out some strategies to rise above other offerings. There are many strategies to potentially use. Getting the maximum number of eyeballs on your listing, as well as branching out and trying to find other ways to advertise outside of Airbnb, are a couple methods. For hosts who want to create their own website, I recommend two website builder sites:
www.webs.com
and
www.wordpress.com
I have also heard this one recommended:
www.wix.com
The first, www.webs.com, was recommended to me by another Airbnb host several years ago, and I used it to create my own website. It is really nice because it's easy to use -- they offer a template that is pretty simple to understand. They also offer free technical support via live chat. It costs anywhere from $6/month for the basic plan to $10/month for the "premium" plan that I have, to a bit more for the professional/high end plan. The nice thing about webs.com is that you can easily view statistics on your site -- eg how many page views you get per day or in any given period, and also see where the traffic comes from.
The second, www.wordpress.com, allows you to create a website for FREE. It is not too difficult to use, though not quite as easy as www.webs.com.
The third I have not tried, but it seems to get good reviews.
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Post by helgaparis on May 25, 2016 22:46:15 GMT
The peer host thing is interesting, I never heard of that.
Another idea, following Deborah: if you want to get more clicks, you can also search yourself on google.
First name, airbnb, town
Or first name, profile airbnb, some info on the profile.
Should work with the listing plus town too, if you have something special that the thousend others don't have,
Get friends and family to do it too.
Good thing that you got an inquiry. I wish for a booking tomorrow!
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Post by Mabel on Jun 1, 2016 0:39:51 GMT
Hi Deborah.
First I want to say that I hope you are taking a few days off to rest your eyeballs after that week or more of non-stop rescuing of boatloads of historical threads from the groups for us to access here. Well-done and thank you so much for all the work.
Secondly, many thanks for your previous post here explaining to me about Craigs List and making a site on Webs. I've gone ahead and done all that and am having fun checking view stats from the Webs site. I have a question to you about how to hyperlink in Craigs List. Is it not allowed? It's not about prohibiting anything airbnb-related, because it won't link to my Webs site who's URL has no mention of Airbnb. I tried all kindsa stuff even pasting in some HTML. No link but at least my URL is there for them to copy and paste, as it seems they are doing, and the number of views on airbnb corresponds with the number on the Webs stats.
Thirdly, it was in one of the recently exhumed threads where I read a convo about hosts who had recently acquired Super Host status, only to see their views drastically reduced (apparently not uncommon), and the possible reasons for this happening. It caught my attention due to the fact that it was just after I got my own SH status that my views did suddenly stop. As you know I thought it was the matching software, but after reading the comments on that thread I realized that even though I had always preferred to not have SH status (heightened expectations from guests, and just generally silly), when the text-in-photos-no-airbnb-for-you! crisis happened to me, I went ahead and tried for SH just to boot my rankings enough to get me back in the game, which it did but then my views stopped. Of course it didn't occur to me to put those two together... who would? So counterintuitive. Gladly I am now getting a view or two and have a new booking. Yay. Thanks for the wish, Helga!
Fourthly, if you would feel comfortable sharing with me in a direct message your Webs listing, I would be grateful. If not I'll settle for a tip about inserting links in Craigs List. (do you really have to renew the ad every 2 days?)
I tried to create a new thread to explain all this because I didn't want to keep this slightly negative title going as it morphs into other topics but I can't for the life of me figure out how to create a new thread, as I don't have that mysterious black button on the upper right of my screen.
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Post by High Priestess on Jun 1, 2016 4:05:51 GMT
Hi Grace -- it has been a very great amount of work I've done in the last 4 days or so, but I was quite motivated to save some of the valuable history of the community, hoping that it may come in useful for hosts such as yourself.
I do not actually know about hyperlinks on Craigslist -- it may be that CL has made that not work-able, in response to complaints about malicious sites.
I have no idea why getting SH would cause one's views to drop! Seems it should be opposite. I have little interest in SH myself but I copied these old threads here mostly becuase they were long ones , involving many of the "forum regulars" who were well informed folks , and there seemed to be alot of useful info there.
What was it you were wanting help with, with my WEbs.com listing? To see how it was set up or something else? I could share it with you privately if you wanted. I just don't want it appearing in public areas on this forum.
FOr CL, you can renew as infrequently or as frequently as you want. If you renew every 2 days you stay in "high search ranking" with your ad nearer the top. If you wait more than 7 days your ad gets deleted automatically. So it's a lot of work...but renewing is not that much time involved...like updating your calendar on Airbnb.
So to create a new thread you need to go to a board ---actually, when you posted the first post in this thread you created a thread!! So you figured out how to do it.
Threads can only be created when you are at the BOARD or SUB-BOARD level -- so you have to click on a board to see the option. IF you are just on the main page showing the whole forum you can't post a thread -- because the thread has to be in a particular board. Also if you are within any thread, you can't post a thread because you are already in one. You can only reply when within a thread. To find your way to the board level click on "HOME" in the upper left and then click on one of the board names...such as New Hosts Forum or Introductions. For boards that have sub-boards you will see the sub boards first and may need to click on one of those.
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Post by linda on Jun 3, 2016 18:44:31 GMT
I have not seen where the matching tool have affected me as yet, but a while back someone on the forum mention to use key words in description and title to attract the type of guests you want. I think it was Evelyn. So for example, I inserted the words ExxomMobil and interns throughout my lists and waAlaa - I have 3 interns. One canceled but u still have the other 2 for and 2 months each. Also,I live in the boonies so it was a great catch for me considering you absolutely must have a car etc. The one intern had her car shipped to my house (actually to Walmart closest to my house). Try using key words and see what that will do.
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Post by High Priestess on Jun 3, 2016 21:44:18 GMT
Linda -- I think that is a great suggestion you bring up, about putting keywords in your listing to try to attract guests who know how to search that way! I have no idea about the stats on how many guests actually try searching on Google for an Airbnb place, using keywords, but it definitely is worth it for a host to consider all possible angles, and that certainly is one of them. I recommend everyone do that.
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